Community of Practice

For this module, I chose to research the community of practice (CoP) learning model. I find this interesting because we had implemented a CoP within our company, simply by chance, which is part of the definition of a CoP. Two things get me excited about that.

First, I love it that the education I am receiving right now is relevant, right now. When making the decision to return to school, one of the questions posed to me was, would it be a wise investment that would assist me in reaching my career goals. Every time I am able to draw a parallel between what is happening in my textbook to what is happening in my office, I believe that is a definitive yes. Understanding theory and the ‘why’ to everything thing I do helps me to make better choices in the future.

I work for a technology company that provides training and support for a multitude of properties across the U.S. and in the Carribbean. In addition to training and support, our company partners with a local university to provide internships to computer science and information technology students. The community of practice implemented within our company is made up of full-time web developers who serve as experts and student interns. I created the following diagram of the community of practice to demonstrate how interns progress through the process.

 

 

Graphical representation of a community of practice – Melissa St. Laurent

The president of our company recently shared a PowerPoint presentation from a colleague that outlined the differences between big technology companies, big companies with technology and startups. This immediately brought to mind Andriessen’s archetypes (2005).

Archetypes of knowledge groups

Cluster Name	Connectivity	Institutionalization	Example of group	From the speakers deck
Interest groups	low	low	Shared interest, little or no cohesion
Informal networks	moderate	low	Communities of interest, Wenger Network of professionals, Brown	Startups?
Informal communities	high	low	Communities of practice, Lave & Wenger	Morris Technology
Strategic communities	high	high	Corporate project teams	Big Technology Companies
Communities	low	high	Delphi participants	Big Companies with Technology

Afterward, I had the opportunity to share with him, the above diagrams and some of the highlights from Hoadley (2012)  in chapter 12 overview. Pleased with the parallel between the two, he is now arranging a forum to discuss communities of practice on a larger scale.

Another example of relevance occurred this evening. While traveling with colleagues a discussion of skill set development surfaced. In this conversation, an example of an intern was given who lacked the knowledge to complete specific tasks. I was able to share the necessity for the availability of experts, scaffolding and other key aspects of the community of practice model.

This brings me to the second reason I get excited. By sharing the relevant knowledge taken from this course with my boss and peers, I am now an active participant in a knowledge share.  I am not naïve enough to believe that the CoP model is the answer to all my training. To impose that would be contrary to much of the research presented in my annotated bibliography.

References:

Andriessen, J. H. E. (2005). Archetypes of knowledge communities. Communities and Technologies, 191–213.

Hoadley, C. (2012). What is a community of practice and how can we support it? In Theoretical foundations of learning environments (2nd ed., pp. 286–299). Routledge.